The odd, eccentric, vivid, random thoughts of an Aspie Riot Nrrrd. Not for the faint of heart or the touchy of mind. You've been warned. ;)

Being (newly) overweight

It’s not my fault. Really, I’m serious. I eat right–clean, fresh, organic whenever possible. Few processed foods, and hardly any fast food. No sodas, no potato chips. I don’t stuff my face; in fact, I don’t eat too much at all. I’m not a couch potato, either. I’m definitely not lazy. I’m not sure where it all went wrong, but something happened.

It’s happened before. I’ve gain and lost 25 pounds twice now, both times for different reasons, and now I’ve gained it all back for probably a third combination of reasons. My thyroid values have run low for the past few years, and maybe it’s finally catching up with me. I’ve had extensive lab testing, which showed toxic levels of 4 heavy metals and high probability of a toxic burden of a 5th heavy metal, based on the fact that I have every single one of the symptoms of overload of that specific metal.

I’m not obese, by any stretch, but I weigh more than I think I should (no, I don’t have body image distortion issues), and I weigh much more than I’m used to. Obviously, I’m very self-conscious about it, and I feel the unwelcome pounds every minute of every day. I know that this will not be part of the Permanent/Long-Term Me, but it’s going to hang around until I can address the root cause.

Being newly overweight is not being able to fit into the jeans you could squeeze into last month, the same jeans that fit comfortably a few months before that, which are also the same jeans that you considered ditching the year before because they were sliding off you, looking baggy.

Being newly overweight is when the little hole in the leg of one of those pairs of jeans slowly grows bigger under the stress of your new body mass.

Being newly overweight is when you bump into things because you’re used to being smaller than you are now.

Being newly overweight is when you see folds and skin creases that weren’t there before.

Being newly overweight is when you start noticing just how skinny someone is, and wishing you could be that thin, too.

Being newly overweight is when you stop laughing at fat jokes.

Being newly overweight is when you start criticizing yourself and your own extra weight.

Being newly overweight is when you start using the handicap bathroom stalls (in not-busy bathrooms) because those stalls have extra room and you don’t knock your elbows into the walls of the stall while pulling down your pants to pee.

Being newly overweight is when you actually start to pay some (minimal) attention to the weight-loss product-related commercials on TV. And you actually start to wonder if they might work. And you file those products in a list of Options That Might Come In Handy, keeping them in the back of your mind in case they’re needed later.

Being newly overweight is when you (sorry if this is crude) wait until after a fruitful bathroom trip to step on the scale, hoping that you’ve shed at least a little bulk, enough to make a difference on the scale, because hey–you’ll take any advantage you can get.

Being newly overweight is when you start downloading carb-counting and weight-tracker apps onto your smartphone.

Being newly overweight is when the compliments on how small, fit, thin, little, or trim you are start to slowly fade away until they’ve evaporated altogether.

Being newly overweight is when you start to wonder if the people around you have noticed your newly-gained weight and are just refraining from saying anything because it would be considered impolite. Are they thinking, “what happened to her?”…

Being newly overweight is when you wonder if you’ll ever be skinny again, or are you doomed to be this way forever.

Being newly overweight is when you feel like a stuffed sausage in your normal clothes and begin to consider shopping for new ones that fit better, but stubbornly hold out because to buy bigger clothes is to embrace the unwanted change and surrender and you’ll never surrender, dammit!

Being newly overweight is when you can’t put anything into your pockets because it would uncomfortably dig into your skin.

Being newly overweight is when you purposefully take less food because you’re self-conscious about how much you eat, even if your food intake is already less than average.

Being newly overweight is when you start choosing your shirts based on their length and where they would fall on your waist/hips, in hopes that you don’t accidentally accentuate your newly-expanded hip size.

Being newly overweight is when you’re conscious of how much tougher it is to get up (even out of a chair) than it was before, because you now have some extra mass in the middle you’re not used to.

Being newly overweight is when you stretch your legs out in front of you while sitting on a curb, because keeping them closer to you would crunch your intruding belly.

Being newly overweight is that helpless, sinking feeling of dread when you step on the scale, followed by the feeling of desperation and hopelessness that consumes you when the scale shows that you have indeed gained more weight like you suspected but didn’t want to be true.

Being newly overweight is when you take all your clothes off just to weigh yourself because, again, you need all the help you can get.

I know I won’t stay like this forever. This is not me. I wasn’t this way for most of my life, and I refuse to stay this way for very long. That being said, I’m not (yet) sure what’s causing it and until I figure it out and then begin to address it, it’s not going to go away.

Compassion is always appreciated; extra weight is not always the person’s own fault. Not all of us are eating ourselves into our graves. Not all of us are near-comatosely inactive. Some of us are confused, our bodies having been hijacked by some unseen force, against our will and without our consent.

Please–find something you do like (like our shirt design or a color that looks good on us) and compliment us on that. Don’t lie and say “you’re skinny!” because we know it’s not true and it just makes us feel worse.

I know my bones are well-developed but I’m not “big-boned”. I don’t feel good. My body is sick somewhere, despite my best efforts. And believe me, it’s not like I’m not trying. For now, it is what it is. But I’m not going to stop trying. Like I said, I’ve gained and lost this much weight twice before, and I’ll lose it this time, too…at some point, anyway.